'This anthology offers a guided tour of the modern ruin as a portal onto what is of vital interest to artists in the cultural and politics of the recent past. Among its subject are the signifying roles of entropy and decay, "non-places" and "drosscape" in a critical environmental art, and the disorientating character of the relic and the spectral in contemporary artworks — an involution of perspectives and timescales that addresses not just the past but the future.

'Artists surveyed include Edgar Arceneaux, Miroslaw Balka, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Walead Beshty, Martin Boyce, Gerard Byrne, Adam Chodzko, Jeremy Deller, Katja Eydel, Ângela Ferreira, Cyprien Gaillard, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Susan Hiller, Roger Hiorns, Runa Islam, Ilya Kabakov, Joachim Koester, Robert Kusmirowski, Zoe Leonard, Vera Lutter, Goshka Macuga, Teresa Margolles, Dorit Margreiter, Edgar Martins, Julie Mehretu, Christian-Philipp Müller, Mike Nelson, Paulina Olowska, The Otolith Group, Philippe Parreno, Mai-Thu Perret, Walid Raad – The Atlas Group, Conrad Shawcross, Robert Smithson, Rachel Whiteread and Jane & Louise Wilson.

'Writers include Magali Arriola, J.G. Ballard, Jean Baudrillard, Svetlana Boym, Giuliana Bruno, J. J. Charlesworth, Barbara Clausen, Jonathan Crary, Jacques Derrida, Jörg Heiser, Martin Herbert, Andreas Huyssen, Patrick Keiller, Darian Leader, Mark Lewis, James Lingwood, Tom McDonough, Jeremy Millar, Celeste Olalquiaga, Nina Power, Ralph Rugoff, Lytle Shaw, Iain Sinclair, Robert Smithson, Rebecca Solnit, Susan Stewart, Anthony Vidler, Paul Virilio and Gilda Williams.' (Back cover)

Ruins is one of the Documents of Contemporary Art series, co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. Other sourcebooks of the same series are also available in the Archive. For more details, please go to this page.